WW CXIV: XCrawl - IT'S OVER!!!!!!

[Danny]

Good game, BIG WANG TRIUMPHS OVER ALL!!!

[Danny]

Great game Kwhit, Im glad it ended with a battle.

[J23]

Originally Posted by Danny

Great game Kwhit, Im glad it ended with a battle.

That's funny, I felt almost the opposite even before the battle took place.

[Poli]

Great game kwhit, but I thought giving the good guys extra healing potions sucked!

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by J23

That's funny, I felt almost the opposite even before the battle took place.

Why is that? Did you not like the way the battles played out?

If it wasn't neck and neck it wouldn't have ended with a battle, by the way. You guys were tied going into the last room, so I figured that would be the best way to end it.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by Poli

Great game kwhit, but I thought giving the good guys extra healing potions sucked!

They still had two more than we did even after that.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by KWhit

Why is that? Did you not like the way the battles played out?

If it wasn't neck and neck it wouldn't have ended with a battle, by the way. You guys were tied going into the last room, so I figured that would be the best way to end it.

Perfect way to end the game considering it was a tie. No one wants a tie.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by Poli

Great game kwhit, but I thought giving the good guys extra healing potions sucked!

I didn't want the game to come down to who had the most healing potions. And they were the most popular team by the last room, so I thought it made sense. In the end, I didn't give them enough to make it even, by any means. The Killers still had 2 more potions than Wang, if I recall, not to mention the 3 extra healing spells the Killers had (to none for Wang).

I am actually really surprised at the outcome. I thought that the Killers would win, based on the stats. But the dice rolls didn't go their way at all.

[Abe Sargent]

I had fun

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by KWhit

And they were the most popular team by the last room, so I thought it made sense.

Out of curiosity, what was popularity based on? Or how did you figure popularity?

[KWhit]

A few different things.

1) Team name contest.
2) In character posts.
3) Actions that the crowd would like (anything that showed cleverness or led to battle, etc).
4) Actions that were true to the team's alignment.
5) Certain items would also help popularity.

[EagleFan]

Only thing that I didn't like (and that could be caused by it not working out well for us) was that we made a couple of correct decisions early in the game and it ended up costing us leveling. The room with the fountains comes to mind as we ended uppicking what turned out to be the correct way out of the game with our first action but the other teams leveled due to a battle caused by their first selections not being the way out. Falling behind in the leveling process early seemed to be our downfall and seemed to penalize us for thinking through our decisions.

That seemed particularly bad because it wasn't like there were choices that were obvious and that we chose to avoid a fight to move along quickly. Especially since there was no huge time gain bonus for getting through that room the fastest without having to be involved in a fight.

[Abe Sargent]

So, KWhit, was it like you thought it would be, GMing a game like this? It's very different.

[J23]

Originally Posted by KWhit

Why is that? Did you not like the way the battles played out?

If it wasn't neck and neck it wouldn't have ended with a battle, by the way. You guys were tied going into the last room, so I figured that would be the best way to end it.

After reading what happened in the last room for the other team, I'm not sure why it was a tie. We took two actions to get through the room, and it looked like the Wangs took at least 2 or 3 more than that. Given that we were tied going into that room, I guess I just don't get the mechanics of how much time what people were doing in the room. We were constantly splitting up in rooms where there were multiple actions to save time, but the outcome suggests that it didn't matter.

I'm also a bit surprised that we were behind in fame as well by the end.

I wonder if I should even bother to post this since I don't want to seem like it's just sour grapes, or that I'm knocking all of the hard work you put into running this. I hope you don't take it as such because it is certainly not meant to be like that.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by J23

After reading what happened in the last room for the other team, I'm not sure why it was a tie. We took two actions to get through the room, and it looked like the Wangs took at least 2 or 3 more than that. Given that we were tied going into that room, I guess I just don't get the mechanics of how much time what people were doing in the room. We were constantly splitting up in rooms where there were multiple actions to save time, but the outcome suggests that it didn't matter.

I'm also a bit surprised that we were behind in fame as well by the end.

I wonder if I should even bother to post this since I don't want to seem like it's just sour grapes, or that I'm knocking all of the hard work you put into running this. I hope you don't take it as such because it is certainly not meant to be like that.

The last room was hard to judge time on. It seemed like by the end of the game, a few people had checked out. It was tough for teams to get their actions together and form consensus because no one wanted to make a unilateral decision, but some people weren't checking in as much as necessary to get a real team decision by deadline.

And I wasn't as available during the day the last couple of days as well to answer questions or process the sub-actions on that last room.

So I let a couple of missed deadlines slide (for both teams) and gave both teams the benefit of the doubt on their actions in that final room. In other words, if Big Wang didn't explicitly state that their people's actions were overlapping, I let them overlap. I didn't want them to be penalized time-wise because they didn't phrase their actions like "Darth checks painting WHILE Autumn checks chest for traps."

I just assumed that is what their characters would do to maximize their time to get through.

In my view the actions to get through the room were similar. No one got stumped. You both took 3 turns to pick the lock. You guys had the additional actions of the Elf's wish spell and you cast 2 spells. They had additional actions of checking the chest for traps and knocking the gem into the water. In my mind, the time was approximately equal. Earlier in the game, I was much more explicit on time, but this room was more of a puzzle and required a different approach.

In my judgement, you both solved the room in a comparable amount of time, so I didn't add time to either of you.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by Abe Sargent

So, KWhit, was it like you thought it would be, GMing a game like this? It's very different.

Holy cow. It took SO much more time and effort than I was expecting. The battles took a lot longer than I thought they would.

I'm glad I only had 4 teams to work with and not more.

And I could have been more prepared before starting. I kind of got surprised that it was my turn to run thee game, and instead of passing I decided to go ahead. But if I ever do this kind of game again, I would make sure I had all rooms written up and better prepared before I started.

[The Jackal]

Great game KWhit, had fun.

[Poli]

My only thought about the potions...and I totally see you side of it...is that The killers were penalized for being better prepared or lucky...whatever you want to call it. I didn't realize the extra potions failed to bring them to an equal level.

[KWhit]

Maybe, but every team got benefits when they were leading in popularity. The Killers benefited from that when they were most popular.

[Poli]

True, and when you said the Wang were leading popularity I was
more comfortable with it.

Good game to all of you.

[Darth Vilus]

Defending Champs Next Year! We're coming back better than ever!

[Chief Rum]

I had a ton of fun in this one, but obviously, we didn't last very long.

Probably my only complaint would be that the opportunities to heal (at least early on) were way too few and far between. For instance, the orc room in three doorway hallway was pretty much a given kill of the entire party, and to not give us healing potion options immediately after that, well, that pretty much killed us for the whole game.

[Poli]

Second best game ever.

[Danny]

BIG WANG!!!!!

[Poli]

I wasn't familiar with "xcrawl". Is it similar to the dungeon crawler that matthean posted about in the board games thread?

[Poli]

PS LOVED XCRAWL. Would love K-Dub to give it another go.